Overview
- Japan’s space agency is set to launch the Martian Moons eXploration probe tonight from Tanegashima on an H3 rocket to begin a five‑year campaign focused on Mars’s moons.
- MMX will spend a multi‑month transit to Mars before entering Martian orbit to map Phobos in detail and close in for phased operations that prepare for surface work.
- A roughly 25‑kilogram German–French rover named Idefix will be deployed from the mothercraft to self‑right, unfold solar panels, and survey Phobos for about 100 days as a scout for safe sampling.
- The mission aims to collect at least ten grams of Phobos material with up to two sampling attempts, then send a return module home with a capsule slated to land in Australia around 2031.
- MMX is JAXA’s most complex planetary probe to date and relies on international partners for instruments and engineering support, building on Japan’s prior sample‑return experience from the Hayabusa missions and offering a decisive test of whether Mars’s moons are captured asteroids or impact debris.